Chris won’t press charges and will be made the villain by Hollywood, as Smith was defending his wife. Translation, the power couple has more power.
There was an interesting question floating around black Twitter last night. If the comedian were white, would he still have gone after him? It’s actually a fascinating question to me because there is so much in it.
Wouldn't it be hard to get around the idea of that event (possibly) being simply acted out (rather than genuine), considering the environment and the accused? Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
Gaming out the what ifs of race seems pointless and counter productive. I understand the thought, it just seems to me like we run that through our own heads and move on, rather than making it a national discussion about a hypothetical.
Matt Yglesias is collecting the "this brief moment confirms my preexisting views on larger issues" tweets. Ouch (thread)
You can say it's much ado about nothing but it does set a bad precedent for a public consumed with social media and celebrity. I thought the joke was dated and dumb but relatively harmless. What if it were a punch instead of a slap? What if the slap caused Rock to fall and hit his head on the ground causing injury or death? There are much more volatile and offensive comedians out there. What if it were a fan at a local comic club thatv does this to a comedian? I only comment on this because it's an interesting discussion on this board but I don't watch these award shows and I'm not losing sleep over it but I do find people's takes on it worth debate.
My question is more generic. If I punch you in front of a cop in the swamp next fall. Do you have to press charges for me to be charged with assault?
I've no idea what role race played if any...I'd speculate that the primary input is past history & WS harboring some neg feelings toward rock. Think about it, for various reasons, there are people who could make a joke about my wife & I'd laugh. There are others who could make the same joke & it would piss me off.
The DA could subpoena Rock's testimony on that point, but realistically, there's rarely any interest in pursuing a simple assault/battery charge when there's no lasting damage and the victim doesn't care enough to press charges. If it were a domestic violence case with a power imbalance, that's a different story. But the DA isn't going to jump into the middle of a dispute between two rich Hollywood actors unless they have to.
I agree with you that hypotheticals are of limited usefulness because the person posing a hypothetical also gets to imagine the outcome. But they can be useful to determine if the situation were different how would our reactions be different. For example, it’s useless to imagine what the outcome would be if Will Smith had been white and slapping a black comedian, but it can be useful to think if my reaction would be different. Or if a black actor slapped a white comedian. What if Will Smith slapped a woman comedian, would we be reacting differently? It can even get more ridiculous: what if the comedian was a man transitioning to be a woman, could he/she still be slapped? Some of these examples can get ridiculous, but thinking about them ahead of time can help define or at least understand what we consider acceptable in society and what we don’t. I remember in the eighth grade at the lake in Winter Park, one of my buddies got into an argument with this girl and she started swinging at him. He ducked and backed away and started walking home. I asked him why didn’t he swing back and he said his mother taught him to never hit a girl even if she was hitting him. Never mind the girl had 20 pounds on him.
Chris Rock is an asshat. For those don't remember, he did this back in 2016, pretty much dogging Will almost the entire awards show. Jada has a known condition where she is losing most of her hair and no guy is going to make fun of any woman's hair loss. It was stupid of him to 1) once again poke fun of Will and Jada and 2) do this in the day of #MeToo. Chris Rock lost about every female fan he had after last night.
Let's not forget that: 1) Will Smith is an actor 2) Will Smith laughed at the joke until Jada shot him an unhappy look about it 3) And despite the physical exaggeration, that slap was basically with his fingertips
Am I the only one that thinks this entire thing was staged ? I admittedly didn’t read the first 5 pages on the thread. I mean wasn’t the whole movie about him protecting his family ?
Awful taste though... I look at it this way. Imaging publicly making fun of a chemo patient for their baldness. Total jackass, right? Now substitute cancer/chemo for alopecia. Still a jackass move. If somebody made fun of my wife for a medical issue she was torn up about, I'd want to rise to her defense too. Not sure Will did it the best way, but that was a bad place for Rock to go.
